Email IDs in Indian Languages to Come

(CCM) — On Monday, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology held a meeting with officials from some of the top email providers in the world to discuss the future possibility of accessing email IDs in vernacular languages. The government met with representatives from Google, Microsoft, and Rediff to discuss the technical issues involved with the implementation of this feature, including necessary algorithms.

The Internationalized Email Framework has already begun supporting mail IDs in any local language. Joint Secretary of IT and Electronics, Rajiv Bansal, also discussed the government's plans regarding the issue. The IT department is aiming to connect 250,000 gram panchayats (village-level authorities) via the internet in the next 3 years under the Bharat Net Project, an ambitious plan created by the present government. It will be difficult for the gram panchayat users to communicate and access their mail in English. To remedy this, the government is now planning to provide all basic email services in their native languages. But Rediff's Chief Technology Officer, Venki Nishtala, said that the government should not enforce it. "What is stopping our prime minister, Narendra Modi, and other officers in [the] government from sending out emails to the public from a Hindi email address," asked Nishtala in an interview with The Economic Times.

So far, there are no actual roadblocks to implementing the new changes. Starting with Hindi, the service will be made available in various vernacular languages gradually. Google and Microsoft have already hinted that their products are ready for the transition. Microsoft said that its latest software supports internationalized email addresses, and Google revealed that its service started recognizing IDs containing non-Latin characters all the way back in 2014.